J-Pop Summit Festival 2014 took place on July 19-20. This was the sixth rendition of the event and by all accounts the biggest. Just a few weeks ago it seemed hard to surpass last year's event which had Kyary Pamyu Pamyu headlining it but J-Pop Summit Festival seems to have done it. Fans of Japanese music were treated to the sights and sounds of performers like Tomomi Itano (newly graduated from AKB48) and the fresh faces of Tokyo Girls Style. The event may have formally closed at 6PM in Japantown but those willing to hang around were able to see singer extraordinaire May'n and end J-Pop Summit with a bang.

My Sunday began at the San Diego Comic Con. By nightfall it ended at the feet of Babymetal. These idols turned metal princesses are some of the youngest that you will see on stage and have gained plenty of attention in the last year where they went from a national act to an international one in no time flat. They've sold out the Budokan, played festivals like Japan's Summer Sonic and UK's Sonisphere, and now they're on US soil; the invasion has begun.

Although wolves might be extinct in the wilderness of Japan, they continue to live on the stage in the music industry. On July 8, the Japanese band, Man With A Mission, graced San Francisco with their presence. The venue was at the Bottom of the Hill in the Portrero Hill neighborhood. Compared to some of the venues I've been to before, the one that Man With A Mission played at was tiny. They've sold out places like the Nippon Budokan and various arenas around Japan as well as appeared at France's massive Japan Expo. For a band that only a few years ago was self-produced, they have had a meteoric rise.

A night at the opera...er, not really. This night was one where the world famous Japanese composer and songwriter Yoshiki performed at the Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco as the second stop on his "Yoshiki Classical World Tour." Yoshiki, the band leader and drummer for legendary group X Japan, is a trained classical pianist and here his headbanging style gave way to a more graceful sounds of strings.

Unfortunately my memory card seems to have died right before the concert started. I personally would like to think that Yoshiki's awesomeness could not be contained in such a small digital form, so in the absence of photos I will have to do my best to describe it with words.